|
Colleagues —
The following article appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Saturday,
July 21, 2001.
Jim Hardeman
==========================
Saturday, July 21, 2001 Reid uses train fire to make pointSenator: Derailment underscores nuclear transport dangers By SCOTT SONNERTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS RENO -- Wednesday's hazardous train derailment in Baltimore underscores the danger of transporting nuclear waste across the country, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said. But backers of a proposed nuclear waste facility at Nevada's Yucca Mountain said Friday that the Nevada Democrat is using scare tactics to try to thwart the project. They say a nuclear waste train wouldn't leak materials in a crash. "Senator Reid is looking to drum up fear about what is a safe, responsible nuclear waste transportation record," said Sarah Berk, press secretary to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a dump proponent. "It is really unfair for Senator Reid to use this as an opportunity to make a case against Yucca Mountain by scaring the public," added Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Industry Institute, a Washington-based industry group. Reid, majority whip in the Senate, acknowledged using scare tactics, but said that wasn't a negative thing. "People should be frightened and afraid and have anxiety because we do not have the ability to safely transport nuclear waste," he said. "I'm afraid, and I want other people to recognize they should also be afraid, because the nuclear power industry has no concern about the safety of human beings. Their only concern is the safety of their profit and loss statements." Reid started the exchange in a Senate floor speech Thursday, saying the crash in a Baltimore tunnel near Camden Yards baseball park should slow the "mad clamor by the nuclear power industry to send nuclear waste somewhere." "They don't care where it goes, but they have focused on Nevada for the present time. And I think everyone needs to recognize that transporting dangerous materials is very difficult," he said. The leaking hydrochloric acid in Baltimore is nothing compared to the high-level radioactive waste proposed for the Yucca Mountain site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, he said. "A speck the size of a pinpoint would kill a person. And we're talking about transporting some 70,000 tons of it across America," Reid said. Reid, the second-ranking senator behind Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said an estimated 60 million people would be within 1 mile of the truck and rail routes proposed to ship waste to Yucca Mountain. "What we should do with nuclear waste is leave it where it is," he said. Craig, a leading advocate of the Yucca site as a place to ship nuclear waste from Idaho, was not immediately available for comment. His spokeswoman said that Craig thinks Reid is engaged in "a misguided and misinformed effort to connect something that should not be connected." "The fact of the matter is, if that train had been carrying nuclear components, it would have been protected in containers that would have prevented this sort of a spill," Berk said from Washington. "The nuclear power industry has a phenomenal safety record and is continuing to develop safe and responsible methods to handle nuclear waste," she said. The industry institute says eight shipping accidents have occurred since the transportation of spent fuel began in 1964, and none of the accidents resulted in radioactive releases because the shipping containers were not breached. "Senator Reid is being somewhat disingenuous," Singer said. "The vaults are made of concrete and steel. They can sustain the most severe accident. Even if it is breached, there is no chain reaction." "The nuclear fuel is a solid material. You are not going to have something like what happened in Baltimore because the used fuel cannot burn or explode," Singer said. Reid disagreed. "Everyone in America should recognize that a train with nuclear waste, no matter what container it has, puts the entire area in jeopardy if they have a fire or something like this." The Energy Department is studying Yucca Mountain as the site to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's highly radioactive waste. A recommendation is expected to be made to President Bush by the end of the year. The earliest the nuclear waste repository could open would be
2010. |